Dark Gold by David Angsten

Author:David Angsten
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Published: 2018-02-01T22:00:00+00:00

IN THE GHOST TOWN of Punta Perdida, the ghosts had come to life. I had been hearing the noise they made from a long way up the shore. A clamor of flutes, rattles, and drums accompanied a high-pitched, whining chant. It sounded Spanish and undoubtedly was Christian, but it had the percussive rhythm of an African tribal hymn. The weird ruckus permeated the stillness of the night. As I walked the darkened shore it seemed always near at hand, yet the ghosts themselves remained elusive. By the time I reached the enormous bonfire, blazing at the water's edge, most of the revelers had abandoned the beach and were heading up into the town. The slow-moving mass of their ragtag procession, snaking up the daunting hills of the village, was hidden by the dark stone walls of the road. All that could be seen from my lowly vantage was their high-held crosses and smoke-trailing torches, a bodiless caravan of bright brass and fire.

I stayed back, crouched in the shadows behind the low wall of a boatyard strewn with fishing nets and upturned hulls, and watched a group of old women who had remained behind to tend the blaze. They circled it slowly, wearing dark shawls over their heads and leaning on crooked sticks of driftwood, which they lifted impulsively to poke at the fire, sending up great swells of sparks and cinders. As if to help in stoking the blaze, they spat into the flames and shouted curses into the air.

What it was they were burning was difficult to tell. Plenty of wood from the forest, no doubt, but something lay at the center of the blaze that looked suspiciously like a coffin. A small coffin, like that of a child. The sides had burned away, but the broken outlines of a glowing frame remained, and within the frame lay a dark, crumpled form wrapped in orange and yellow flames. It sent forth whirls of black smoke that rose up with the floating cinders and blended into the dome of darkness hovering over the beach.

Was it Gracchus they were burning? I couldn't quite see. The form was larger than a child but smaller than a man. I was still crouching uncomfortably behind the wall; my legs began to tremble. I felt that I was witnessing some secret, twisted rite. This was not a bonfire of joy and celebration. Nor was it a funeral pyre—there were no mourners here, no sense of bereavement, no anguished display of grief and loss. There was spitting and cursing and the stoking of flames. Flesh was being burned, being turned into ashes and delivered to the sky. Like the head of the goat, the body of the dog could be an offering of sorts, an act of appeasement or of supplication, a sacrificial tribute to their darkly brooding god.

I slipped over the low wall into the boatyard. Hunching down, I snuck from hull to hull, keeping to the shadows as I crossed to take a closer look.

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